Kids not just playing around in MTC's 'Godot'

MARIN THEATRE COMPANY offers a wide variety of dramatic fare, but one thing that hasn't been seen on the main stage in quite some time is children.

In fact, it's been almost exactly 13 years since the last play that involved a child actor, when two Marin fifth- and sixth-graders alternated in the role of a young boy in 2000's "Mister Schpill & Mister Tippeton." There have been child characters in plays since Jasson Minadakis took over as artistic director six years ago, but they've always been played by adult actors.

Until now, that is. And what's the play that's broken the age-of-majority barrier? If you're thinking "Annie," you've got the wrong theater company. No, it's Samuel Beckett's 1953 absurdist masterpiece of existential angst, "Waiting for Godot," in which two tramps linger in a deserted wasteland, waiting in vain for a vague appointment with an important man. There's one child character, a young boy who appears very seldom but prominently, with an important message to deliver.

Working alongside pros Mark Anderson Phillips, Mark Bedard, James Carpenter and Ben Johnson in Minadakis' staging, the boy is played by two middle school students, 13-year-old Sam Novick of San Rafael and 12-year-old Lucas Meyers of Mill Valley. The two young actors alternate in the role roughly equally, in a schedule arranged with their parents beforehand.

It's standard practice to double-cast roles for underage actors in professional shows, because a seven-show week is a lot to ask of a kid, especially juggling it with his school schedule.

"It's also useful for them to be able to share ideas with each other, to be directed together," says assistant director Logan Ellis, who's been working closely with the boys on the play.

One thing that's absolutely necessary when employing young performers is that they have adult supervision at all times, and at Marin that's several people's job — not in a vague "it takes a village" way, but by a specific group of people with very specific tasks.

It starts with Daunielle Rasmussen, the company's new education director. Rasmussen, 32, came to MTC from California Shakespeare Theater last summer and now lives in Sausalito.

"Logan has been working with them on the play itself, but I've been there to provide emotional support and to help navigate the differences between educational theater and being in a professional environment," she says. "When to engage in conversation or how to behave on breaks, simple things like that, because they're still in a place where it's still a very social experience to be in a play."

Director Minadakis works directly with the boys in rehearsal; but when he's working on scenes with the adult actors, Ellis takes the youths to another room to continue running through their scenes with them. Ellis, 21, comes to Marin from a year's artistic directing apprenticeship at San Francisco's Magic Theatre, where he did similar work with the four boys in "Bruja," Luis Alfaro's adaptation of "Medea."

"I think the biggest challenge in directing kids is that you absolutely have to know what you're saying, and you have to be able to say it in more than one way," Ellis says. "And those ways have to be the simplest, clearest ways possible. Since this play has infinite interpretations, the biggest thing is that Jasson and I are really in sync as to where the boys need to be going and what is the reality for the character. All of that has to be really clear from the beginning. "

The support system hardly ends there.

"Our deck manager/ASM (assistant stage manager) is constantly with them, and our stage manager is very involved with them and in communication with their parents," Rasmussen explains.

Once performances start, they're turned over to a "child wrangler" who watches over them backstage the whole time they're onsite. That role is filled by education fellow Mariel Rossman, a Tam High alumna who recently graduated from UCLA.

Rasmussen oversees all the company's education programs, including classes in local schools and summer camps. Both young actors came out of the MTC's summer camp — Meyers a few years ago, and Novick just this past summer. In fact, the latter boy was discovered in the camp after auditions had already been conducted.

Both boys are thoughtful, outgoing and impressively self-possessed. Beckett is new to them, and they're brimming with ideas about what this play means, set in, as Novick puts it, "a perpetual world of desolate nothingness."

The duo are both keenly interested in pursuing acting, but both are torn between it and other artistic pursuits such as drawing and music.

"I want to be like a Renaissance artist and have a repertoire of different things," Novick says.

Both are enjoying being in a professional show after their youth theater experiences.

"In a way it's more challenging but in a way it's a lot easier, working with these amazing people," Meyers attests. "The actors, they just give it so much realism when you're put in a situation with them, instead of a bunch of kids. I mean, kids can be great actors, but not like these guys. It's a whole different level."